The Biggest American Layoff Queens in 2016 “So Far”
The year isn’t over yet. More mass layoffs to come.
by Wolf Richter
WolfStreet.com
August 19, 2016
The most recent company to announce four-digit layoffs was Cisco on Wednesday with 5,500 people on its list. It followed numerous other announcements of mass layoffs this year – particularly in oil-and-gas, brick-and-mortar retail, and tech.
Since the oil bust began, there have been 195,000 job cuts in the US alone, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Of those, about 95,000 occurred in 2016. They were concentrated in just a few states, particularly Texas. And it’s not over: there was a “resurgence” of 17,725 job cuts in July.
Tech announced about 55,000 layoffs so far this year, including Cisco. The sector is getting clobbered by a sea change in technology, the shift to mobile, and the downward spiral of the entire PC ecosystem. And retail announced nearly 44,000, not including Macy’s still unspecified job cuts associated with shuttering 100 Macy’s stores.
So 24/7 Wall St. interviewed John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray. And digging into additional data, it came up with its list of the biggest layoff announcements in 2016 so far – “so far” because the year isn’t over yet.
Layoff announcements can cover the global workforce, as in Cisco’s case. So not all of Cisco’s 5,500 layoffs are likely to happen in the US. And they may not necessarily happen this year. These things can drag out. For example, retailers generally want to keep their stores open and fully staffed through the holiday selling season and not shut them down just before.
So here they are in reverse order of magnitude.
The Rest…HERE
